About Optics & Photonics TopicsOSA Publishing developed the Optics and Photonics Topics to help organize its diverse content more accurately by topic area. This topic browser contains over 2400 terms and is organized in a three-level hierarchy. Read more.

Topics can be refined further in the search results. The Topic facet will reveal the high-level topics associated with the articles returned in the search results.

Abstract

Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy is used to study the nature and efficiency of coupling between surface plasmon polaritons and free-space terahertz radiation by metallic gratings made from brass rods and a grooved aluminum plate. Reflection and transmission mode measurements indicate very rapid coupling and decoupling with >70% efficiency after accounting for scattering. Results indicate a good match to theoretical coupling frequencies within the accuracy of the experimental setup.

Energy spectra of collected waveforms. The thick dashed curves are reference spectra from flat mirror targets in (a) and (c) or from free-space transmission (no target) in (b). Thin curves in (a) and (c) correspond to the parallel grating configurations. Thick curves in (a) and (c) are spectra of the windowed ringing data labeled in Fig. 2. Both solid curves in (b) are spectra of windowed ringing data labeled in Fig. 2. All spectra were normalized with the same value and, for clarity, the spectra in (b) were scaled up as indicated. (d) Illustration of rod imperfections.